“We’re looking at the future here,” Emergent CEO Scott Johnson said in an interview with Develop.

He added that “no one knows when the next generation starts”, but his newest business partner – Krome CEO Robert Walsh – said the joint venture is preparing for a new dawn.

Both Krome and Emergent announced today that they will merge their middleware technologies and core engineering teams as part of a new joint venture.

“In three years time, I think our workforce will be bigger,” said Walsh.

“We’ve got to start planning for the next generation of consoles – it’s coming, whether it’s in two years or four. Right now we’re still going to support and build on our own tech, but we’re also going to be planning for the next generation.”

As part of the new partnership, Emergent will for the first time play a part in game development. Both companies expect to see their first game out in the wild by 2011.

Said Johnson: “When I took over as CEO I made it clear that Emergent needs to get closer to game development, and this is something we’ve been working on very methodically.”